552 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. knock it down and make sure of it ? Twenty- five pounds ! Why, there would be a clear ten pounds' profit after leaving a fair margin for all the annoyance and worry. Why couldn't he drop that hammer and end it ? ^ The auctioneer looked inquiringly at him. The auctioneer simply couldn't help it, he seemed so excited and interested. " He wants to know if he shall let it go at the price," said Cherry to himself " Yes, man, yes, sell it and be d— done with it ! " and he nodded vigorously in his excitement. " Twenty-five-ten ! " said the auctioneer, mfle.xibly, " any advance on twenty-five pounds ten ?— for the last time— twenty-five pounds ten— going— going— gone ! " "Name, sir, if you please?" he said, pointing his hammer at Cherry and almost knocking him over by that simple action. " I — I — I " said the amazed Cherry. " Your name, sir 1— if— you— please. My clerk will take your deposit. Now, sir, come, you are retarding the sale." ■ "Damnation!", said Cherry, in lieu of bursting. " Cherriton." "Cherrystones, Sam, it sounded like," said the auctioneer to his clerk. " Perhaps you will send up your card, sir. hfe.xt lot ! " " Why," said a stout lady standing by the door, just as Cherry made his miserable way out, " that's the same Mr. Cherrystones as bought a buhl cabinet at Arling the other day. I've seen him myself buy at least half- a-dozen. He must be in a big way, for they're not things that sell quick. Who is he?" Cherry almost feared to go home. He felt much more inclined to wander away into the desert and bury himself in the mud and pass away and be forgotten. " Killed by a buhl cabinet," would be the inscription on his tombstone, if ever they found his body, and he smiled grimly to him- self to think how it would excite the wonder- mg comment of future generations. And so, having come to himself, he went home and told Mrs. Cherriton that the cabinet was still unsold. When he opened the daily paper next morning his horror-stricken eye fell on this paragraph, and he read it at least a dozen times in a dazed kind of way : — " We. all of us have young friends who collect postage-stamps— we have probably all been guilty of the oflenee, if it be one, in our youth. AVe most of us know — to our cost, maybe ^- people who collect auto- graph.s, or coin.s, or crests. We hear of " individuals whose chief gratification in life is the acquisition of fans — or pipes, or ^ medals, or similar easily-stowed-away articles. But there is an eccentric person down Ading way, who possesses the eccentric name of Cherrystones, and whose little hobby is the collection of— buhl cabinets ! The acquisition of these massive and costly articles of furniture is a positive monomania with the eccentric Cherrystones. He buys every- one that is offered, and is said to have now the finest and largest collection in this country, and he is still constantly adding to it. Is the eccentric Mr. Cherry.stones simply a collector from motives of pleasure, we wonder, or is he an extremely far-sighted individual looking forward to the time — probably not so very far distant — when buhl cabinets will be in again, and good specimens will reach fancy prices, and Mr. Cherrystones' acumen will be rewarded ? " (Then followed a learned dissertation on buhl cabinets.) " Meanwhile the prices of buhl cabinets are stiff'ening— the one at the Burton sale in ^'est Kensington yesterday went for over ;£25— to Mr. Cherrystones— and if any one of our readers happens to be the possessor of an unusually fine specimen, we advise him to stick to it till the eccentric Mr. Cherry- stones comes along with his bottomless purse in his hand and makes an adequate offer for it." Cherry folded up the paper when he had thoroughly assimilated that hideous para- graph, and placed it inside his waistcoat and went up to the City, and called on his lawyer, who was a very old friend of his. He showed him the objectionable paragraph, and stated his intention of issuing a writ for libel against the paper for holding him up to scorn, ridicule, and contempt. " But what's it all about ? " asked his friend. " It's all a lie," said Cherry. " But have you been buying buhl cabinets?" "Yes, I have"— and then he told the whole story from beginning to end, and, before he was through, his friend, who had humorous points about him, lay down flat in his chair to laugh, and felt like lying down on the hearth-rug. "Well, have I a case?" asked Cherry, -when his friend wiis in a condition to be spoken to again. " Oh, yes, you've got any amount of a case. Cherry. But you can't possibly fight it. Your defence is infinitely funnier than the original libel." " I don't see any fun in the original libel." " The whole thing's too funny to speak of
